I'm crazily deeply madly in love with Valentina Lisitsa

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Skip to 18:00


And then there's this!

[chadbrochill17]

Yep. I spent the whole 2 hours watching that concert during work yesterday. Absolutely worth it in every regard.
I began watching her videos last year and she is by far my favorite pianist.

[ahinton]

Skip to 18:00

Have you by chance mentioned your affection for her to her husband?

Best,

Alistair

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Have you by chance mentioned your affection for her to her husband?

Best,

Alistair

Haha lol

[gitaristica]

I found her La Campanella very interesting. I always loved the original, but thought that Liszt's version of the piece was very ugly. Untill I listened to her. I'm not a pianist, so I can't say what is different. But when she plays it, it sounds more fluent and it is still staccato. It is not "chopping beefstake". Maybe what I say doesn't make any sense, but that's how it sounds to me.

[kclee6337]

what is the first piece she plays??? i could hardly understand her, watching her videos on youtube for a while now I've never heard her talk, I had imagined less of an accent.


never mind found it.
liszt hungarian rhapsody no. 12

[starstruck5]

Ho can anyone NOT love Valentina?

[ahinton]

Ho can anyone NOT love Valentina?

Presuming that, by "ho", you mean "how", my own answer is quite easily, since I have never met her. Simples.

Best,

Alistair

[ancientsolar]

She wished me luck for my exam, wasnt expecting her to respond to my youtube comment, but it meant alot   ~ I have found her very motivating, ~ somehow I can feel a Horowitz style in her playing and concert structure, ~ she plays what she likes, and what her audience likes, ~ no particular limitations.

another inspirational thing is how shes achieved her fame and the connection with her fans is immense!

1 piece I¬d like to see her play that Horowitz lit me up with is

[chadbrochill17]

Did anyone else find the clapping at the start of La Campanella extremely rude? I face-palmed with her when I saw it and I find it annoying when I listen to her CD as the clapping is still there.
I mentioned this on her YouTube video and she said she actually didn't mind it. She is so nice.

[philb]

Ho can anyone NOT love Valentina?

I don't. No mean to start a war, but I have yet to find a recording of hers which has moved me in any way. Her technical facility is definitely impressive (maybe to some), but there's a certain quality of her playing that I can't acquire a taste for.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

I don't. No mean to start a war, but I have yet to find a recording of hers which has moved me in any way. Her technical facility is definitely impressive (maybe to some), but there's a certain quality of her playing that I can't acquire a taste for.

I think she does a pretty good Rachmaninoff 1st sonata.  The ONLY one that I like.  There's two of them.  One at a concert and one that she recorded with better quality and accuracy.  So you'll have to decide which one you like better.

[ancientsolar]

Did anyone else find the clapping at the start of La Campanella extremely rude? I face-palmed with her when I saw it and I find it annoying when I listen to her CD as the clapping is still there.
I mentioned this on her YouTube video and she said she actually didn't mind it. She is so nice.

If you notice people were randomly clapping throughtout the performance, ~ she didnt get up for some of them and made a false smile.. lol

[pytheamateur]

Did anyone else find the clapping at the start of La Campanella extremely rude? I face-palmed with her when I saw it and I find it annoying when I listen to her CD as the clapping is still there.
I mentioned this on her YouTube video and she said she actually didn't mind it. She is so nice.

Many members of her audience are not the typical classical music lovers.  The reason she is so popular is that she can draw people who have probably only gone to pop or rock concerts before; for them it's perfectly ok to clap at the start of a performance.

[pytheamateur]

Is she your first love?

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Is she your first love?

I thought that I knew love before this, but this is my true, TRUE first love!  

I love her just as much as I love Rachmaninoff!

 

[black_keys]

I thought that I knew love before this, but this is my true, TRUE first love!  

I love her just as much as I love Rachmaninoff!

That means that you love Rachmaninov for no clear reason

[rachmaninoff_forever]

That means that you love Rachmaninov for no clear reason

How?

[j_menz]

I thought that I knew love before this, but this is my true, TRUE first love!  

I love her just as much as I love Rachmaninoff!

 

You may need this, specially chilled:

[ajspiano]

I used to have this issue with Diana Krall.

[j_menz]

I used to have this issue with Diana Krall.

No wonder Melbourne needed that water desalination thingie.

[ajspiano]

No wonder Melbourne needed that water desalination thingie.

Perhaps, except I lived in WA at that time.

[black_keys]

How?

I mean Rachmaninov is much much better than Valentina Lisitsa.

[pytheamateur]

I mean Rachmaninov is much much better than Valentina Lisitsa.

I'm not homosexual, but I could tell Rachmaninov was quite a handsome man.  I'm heterosexual and have seen female pianists more attractive than Listsa.

[chadbrochill17]

I'm not homosexual, but I could tell Rachmaninov was quite a handsome man.  I'm heterosexual and have seen female pianists more attractive than Listsa.

Agreed. However she is still anything but unattractive. For me her personality increases her attractiveness because she is incredibly nice and humble. And she's amazing at piano. That's always a plus.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

I mean Rachmaninov is much much better than Valentina Lisitsa.

I actually hated listening to Rachmaninoff play his own music.  I thought he was awful at playing his own works but good at playing everyone elses.

[philb]

I actually hated listening to Rachmaninoff play his own music.  I thought he was awful at playing his own works but good at playing everyone elses.

[pytheamateur]

I actually hated listening to Rachmaninoff play his own music.  I thought he was awful at playing his own works but good at playing everyone elses.

Just because a composer wrote a piece of music does not necessarily mean that he can play it.  Balakirev was allegedly unable to play Islamey.  Tchaikovsky was not known as a great pianist and were probably unable to play his own concerti.  I'm not sure if the same would be true for Rachmaninoff playing his own music though.

[chadbrochill17]

Rachmaninoff playing his own music is quite spellbouding actually. And Valentina based her interpretations of his music off of his recordings, especially his concerti. I think his version of his first is extraordinary.

[pytheamateur]

There was less rubato or Hollywood-type sentimentality in Rachmaninoff's playing.  Here's what Stephen Kovacevich has to say about this, in the context of Schubert's Impromptu in G Flat Major.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Rachmaninoff playing his own music is quite spellbouding actually. And Valentina based her interpretations of his music off of his recordings, especially his concerti. I think his version of his first is extraordinary.

Yeah, I read in an interview that she based her Rach 3 off of Rachmaninoff himself.

But maybe I don't like him because the quality of when he plays his own concerti sucks.

[Bob]

*Bob wonders why she's talking so much, and has no idea what she's talking about....*


That could be taken the wrong way.    If I were in the audience I'd be thinking, "Just shut up and play already."  I started at 18:00 and five minutes later she's still talking....

[chadbrochill17]

*Bob wonders why she's talking so much, and has no idea what she's talking about....*


That could be taken the wrong way.    If I were in the audience I'd be thinking, "Just shut up and play already."  I started at 18:00 and five minutes later she's still talking....

It's her debut really. I found her story interesting and love her personality. Even if I didn't I would forgive her for her almost 3 hour performance.

[hfmadopter]

I find Valentina to be an amazing pianist and her story to be even more amazing. Anyone can say what they want ( no performer has or had a 100% following), but you got to admit to go from 2007 and a Youtube video to Carnegie Hall, on to Royal Albert and sign on with Decca by 2012 is just something else. Don't lose your head in the process, play a huge concert like this and have a 50,000,000 member following is just a tad above average.

If that happened to me my intro would be longer than the 5 minutes someone complained about !
David

[pytheamateur]

I find Valentina to be an amazing pianist and her story to be even more amazing. Anyone can say what they want ( no performer has or had a 100% following), but you got to admit to go from 2007 and a Youtube video to Carnegie Hall, on to Royal Albert and sign on with Decca by 2012 is just something else. Don't lose your head in the process, play a huge concert like this and have a 50,000,000 member following is just a tad above average.

What you will not now read from her official promotional material is that this CD is far from being her first CD with a major record label.  Apart from a couple of discs with Naxos, does anyone know she has actually recorded a disc with Deutsche Grammophon?  One wonders if she would have kept silent about the DG disc if she had actually been signed on by DG instead of Decca.  The morale of the story seems to be that this fairy tale is not without the usual marketing polish.

[hfmadopter]

What you will not now read from her official promotional material is that this CD is far from being her first CD with a major record label.  Apart from a couple of discs with Naxos, does anyone know she has actually recorded a disc with Deutsche Grammophon?  One wonders if she would have kept silent about the DG disc if she had actually been signed on by DG instead of Decca.  The morale of the story seems to be that this fairy tale is not without the usual marketing polish.

Yes I knew she did other recordings, I did not know who with. I saw an interview a few months ago about people saying it would be good to promote her, that her music should be promoted. I don't think anyone thinks of her success story thus far as a fairy tale. She speaks herself of the long time period of not much happening with her musical career goals but also the long time that it took to put the Royal Albert performance together. And I took that as not just musically but organizing.

I think the moral of the story is stick to your goals.
David

[j_menz]

https://www.pianostreet.com/blog/articles/social-media-authenticity-and-how-not-to-play-fur-elise-5132/

Still? 

[davidjosepha]

https://www.pianostreet.com/blog/articles/social-media-authenticity-and-how-not-to-play-fur-elise-5132/

Still? 

That made me a little angry too...music is all about paying attention to even the tiniest details, and yet she missed a rather huge one...

[ahinton]

That made me a little angry too...music is all about paying attention to even the tiniest details, and yet she missed a rather huge one...

The accompanying blurb asks

"Does Lisitsa play from a hitherto unknown manuscript, with a time signature change in that bar, or are the missing notes part of a PR trick or ironic joke? Did she learn the piece from [one Ozie Cargile] or any other of the hordes of incorrect YouTube "tutorials"? Perhaps more likely, we are listening to the result of a misreading from childhood left unaddressed".

Well, if the last of these is the case (and each of the remainder seem at least as unlikely as each of the others as to be unworthy of serious consideration), then she'd be in the good company of Shura Cherkassky, no less, who admitted in an interview quite late in life that, when preparing Beethoven's Op. 101 sonata for performance that season, he discovered for the first time that he'd been misreading something ever since he'd first set fingers on the piece at least 60 years earlier...

The blurb continues

"As a matter of fact, Lisitsa has had a performance of Für Elise up on YouTube since 2009 (also skipping that beat), attracting a whopping number of 2.7 million views and receiving over 3,300 YT-comments. Considering her presence on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, one would have wished that at least somebody of her fans could have helpfully pointed her mistake out, so that she could play the piece correctly on her Decca debut.

This may say more about the nature and substance of social media than about anything else".

Or maybe it just tells people that all of those listeners must, like some people here, be "in love with her" and so would not have been so discourteous and ungallant as to mention it.

It goes on

"But there are also several professional reviews of the new album out there already, talking among other things about “admirable lightness of touch and appreciation of rhythmic flow to her Für Elise”. Nobody mentions that the bar 14 reading is by far the most unique[sic - a thing is either unique or it isn't; "uniqueness" is not a comparative] feature of this recording. What does that mean? Does[sic] music journalists take the time to really listen to [or to split their infinitives over?] the albums they review? Or is it a "The Emperor’s New Clothes" syndrome?"

I neither know nor care, frankly, but I daresay that there are a few here who'd rather Ms Lisitsa dispensed with clothes altogether, be they the Emperor's or anyone else's and be they new or old, but that's another matter altogether.

It goes on

"Have we already heard so many incorrect versions that we are all immune? Or is this passage in its correct form such a tremendous metric somersault of Beethovenian wizardry that nobody is supposed to know where the downbeats are anyway?"

Mon Dieu! What kind of question is that? We're not talking Elliott Carter's metric modulation processes or Brian Ferneyhough's nested tuplets here, are we?...

The blurb then tells us all

"How to get it right"

Not content with that, however, it goes on to inform us that

"On a side note[it doesn't tell us which side or which note], in one of his several versions[,] Richard Clayderman skips the entire bar 14! This seems however like a deliberate artistic decision to get the structure to fit his re-arrangement of the time signature in the whole piece from 3/8 into 12/16".
Preferring as I do not to be drawn into the question of whether or to what extent M. Pagès might be capable of "artistic decisions", it seems to me more like a good idea in the making but which didn't quite see itself to the full fruition that it arguably might have done had he cut the entire piece...

In conclusion, the writer opines that

"Since listening to recordings do have impact on the learning process, not least for less experienced players, Clayderman’s 1.1 million and Lisitsa’s 2.6 million Für Elise views on YouTube (not to mention all the incorrect "tutorials") may indeed inspire many to play piano but can also cause confusion".

I'd question the extent if any to which the former is likely but the latter is such a statement of the b*e*d**g obvious that it hardly needs saying.

If only Richard Clayderman were in love with Valentina Lisitsa, we could perhaps all move on and leave them both to Dis-Ere one another and make whoopee with their missing semiquavers...

Best,

Alistair

[49410enrique]

what's the deal. the recital is gone! i should have downloaded the whole thing when i had the chance!

oh well. at least excerpts are making their way out. maybe she's editing the thing and piecingit out bit by bit?

so glad she put this

[rachmaninoff_forever]

[ Invalid YouTube link ]

Yes!!!  Found it!!!

Prokofiev piano 2 cadenza by none other than Valentina Lisitsa!

Except...

Ah, you'll find out.

[chadbrochill17]

[ Invalid YouTube link ]

Yes!!!  Found it!!!

Prokofiev piano 2 cadenza by none other than Valentina Lisitsa!

Except...

Ah, you'll find out.

Yeah I sat there dumbfounded when I found this

[davidjosepha]

[ Invalid YouTube link ]

Yes!!!  Found it!!!

Prokofiev piano 2 cadenza by none other than Valentina Lisitsa!

Except...

Ah, you'll find out.

She plays it very well until about 5 minutes in. Then she's playing way too fast. Not taking any time where it's needed.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

She plays it very well until about 5 minutes in. Then she's playing way too fast. Not taking any time where it's needed.

Well this is for a rock band, not for an orchestra.  If it was an orchestra, it would be playing so fast.

But her being affiliated with different genres of music deepens my love for her even more!

[j_menz]

Well this is for a rock band, not for an orchestra.  If it was an orchestra, it would be playing so fast.

But her being affiliated with different genres of music deepens my love for her even more!

I take it she hasn't managed to get that restraining order served yet. 

[ahinton]

I take it she hasn't managed to get that restraining order served yet. 

Maybe that's because she's also been seeking a retraining order...

Best,

Alistair

[rachmaninoff_forever]

I take it she hasn't managed to get that restraining order served yet. 

Irrespective of whether or not she has, I would still be her number one fan!

And besides, since I'll probably never meet her anyways, her filing a restraining order on me would be awesome!  I get a piece of paper signed by Valentina Lisitsa! 


Hahahahhahahha lol

[chopin2015]

Not gonna lie, her etude videos, although not all emotionally satisfying-were really sexy.

[ahinton]

Irrespective of whether or not she has, I would still be her number one fan!

And besides, since I'll probably never meet her anyways, her filing a restraining order on me would be awesome!  I get a piece of paper signed by Valentina Lisitsa!  

Maybe you should get out more (thought perhaps not to a Lisitsa concert)...

Best,

Alistair

[ajspiano]

maybe you can book her for your next birthday party..

Tanja Dorn
General Management   tdorn@imgartists.com
+49 511 437 8134/+ 1 212 994 3540

Linda Petríková
Managerial Associate   lpetrikova@imgartists.com
+1 212 994 3512

Some additional research suggests that the appearance fee for a private function will be a MINIMUM 15,000 USD, plus travel and accommodation expenses, as per delafont.com - they aren't artist specific with pricing though, so could be much higher.. 

lucky you're in america, otherwise the minimum is $50K